Air passenger's rights in the European Union

After being informed by Bjorg about the dismal service of Ryanair, I did a search on yahoo for "Ryanair sucks" and discovered that there were a whole host of webpages written by various people regarding their various horrible experiences with Ryanair. We should have done this search before Bjorg booked her flight.

One of the articles that I found was written by Kevin Myers, a reputable Irish journalist. Here's the link.

Anyway the next thing I did was to look up the Ryanair terms & conditions. Ryanair's terms of carriage is subject to EU REgulation 261/2004 which deals with the passenger's rights in the event of cancellation or delay. If you're interested, you can look up the regulation on europa.eu.int.

In short, under the Regulation, in the event there has been a flight cancellation without warning, the airline has to do the following:-

a) provide you with a notice on the rules for compensation and assistance;
b) pay for your meals and refreshments during the period of delay;
c) allow you two free phone calls/faxes/emails;
d) provide you with free hotel/transfers if the delay is overnight; and
e) provide compensation in accordance with article 7 of the Regulations.

The airline will not have to provide compensation under item (e) above only if it can show that the cancellation is caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. Items (a), (b) (c) and (d) must be done by the airline regardless of whether they are at fault or not. As Bjorg has not been given any real explanation as to the reason for the cancellation, I reckon that she is entitled to compensation.

So if you ever have problems with Ryanair (or any other airline) in the EU, remember your rights.

I guess it is true that "Ryanair sucks". There's even been a call for a boycott of Ryanair (which I didn't know about) for preventing blind passengers from flying on their planes.

We'll stick with Norwegian and Germanwings.